May 31, 2005

"There's an alternative to the destruction of life," he said. "But the stem cell issue is really one of federal funding, that's the issue before us, and that is whether or not we use taxpayers' money to destroy life. ... I don't believe we should." -Bush at a Rose Garden press conference today

Oh wait, you mean this life?

5 day old embryo

Gotcha, then it's okay to destroy this life.

Iraqi children

No wonder Rove has to ball gag Bush. He indicts himself and his war every time he opens that pie hole of his.

May 29, 2005

I was sitting next to Common Dreams' Russell Mokhiber at a White House press conference, sneering at Scott McLellan last November when Mokhiber posed this question:Mokhiber: Kofi Annan in September said that the Iraq war is an illegal war. If it is an illegal war, then the 100,000 who have died there – according to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health – are victims of war crimes. Now, the President is going to Canada later this year. And the largest circulation newspaper in Canada (the Toronto Star) printed a column yesterday titled “Should Canada Indict Bush?” – raising the question of a war crimes prosecution. They have a war crimes law in Canada. And I’m wondering –

Scott McLellan: Do you have a question or is it just a statement of opinion?

Mokhiber: No, this is the question. Has the White House counsel looked at the President’s legal exposure to a war crimes prosecution?

Scott McLellan: It is a ridiculous question that you bring up. You were out on the Nader campaign at the time that this issue came up. It was addressed at that time. And I’m not going to go through it again.

May 28, 2005

(This story is posted on SB IndyMedia and might air for Free Speech next week...assuming it isn't out of date.)

News of a formal push to engage the Star Wars program has fueled fears of an impending arms race perpetuated by university ties to weapons making.

The U.S. Air Force is seeking President Bush's approval to implement policy that will solidify plans to weaponize space. The request has sparked concerns of the start of another arms race. Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, promotes efforts to halt the star wars program.

"In order to pay for Star Wars they’re going to have to cut education, healthcare, job training,environmental clean-up, these are the programs that will be used to pay for Star Wars, and the American people have go to speak up and say we do not want our hard earned tax dollars to be used to create a new arms race in space. "

News of the U.S. push to arm space coincides with this month's United Nations talks in NY to decide the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. David Krieger, President of Santa Barbara’s Nuclear Age Peace Foundation attended the opening days of the conference.

“At this treaty conference most of the countries that are non nuclear are saying 'you nuclear weapons states must stand behind the agreements that you’ve already made, you just can’t walk away from those and say we’re starting over again--that’s not acceptable to us, we want to see progress on your nuclear disarmament commitment and obligation,' and basicallythat’s not happening."

The Foundation has most recently worked to raise awareness about what’s been dubbed the military industrial academic complex, the symbiosis between themilitary, high tech, and research industries. There are a number of universities nationwide that are contracted by the government to oversee weapons research. According to the National Science Foundation, John Hopkins University and Pennsylvania State each receive hundreds of millions of dollarsannually. Higher education’s dependence on federal funding for weapons research empowers the department of defense to influence university policies, particularly on the contentious issue of campus military recruitment.

Speaking to students in Santa Barbara, David Krieger describes the University of California's relationship to nuclear weapons production.

“You, all of you at the University of California have a relation to nuclear weapons because your University, the University of California, has provided management and oversight for a United States nuclear lab for the past more than 60 years and continue to do that, so that means that as great as this university may otherwise be, it is complicit in making weapons of mass destruction.”

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has distributed its student published demilitarization guide to schools around the country in an effort to raise awareness of university ties to nuclear arms research and production. Will Parrish is coordinator of the UC Nuclear Free campaign at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is attending the UC regents meeting this week to protest the renewal of a UC contract to manage a nuclear research lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

“This meeting is historic because the UC has never had to competitively bid for he labs… we’ve been organizing against the UC making a competitive bid and not only is it going to enter a bid but it’s going to enter a bid with some of the most notorious corporations in the world.”

The winner of the Los Alamos contract will be decided at the end of this year.

John Tierney of the NYT is in denial once again, this time trying to co-opt John Lennon’s vision of a world without war in his column “Give Peace a Chance.”

He puts forth a caveat which completely devastates his argument—notwithstanding the genocide in Darfur and the occupation of Iraq (which constitute only some the most horrifying examples of violence on the globe), the level of “organized violence” has dropped in recent years.What about “disorganized” violence—manifest in bombings, stemming from social inequality and frustration over U.S. hegemony—the brand of violence the “war on terror” purports to be combating, and so ineptly addresses?

This column is just another one of his desperate attempts to convince people that “freedom is on the march,” similar to his hairbrained notion that the news media is blowing violence in Iraq out of proportion, and that naturally the logical solution is to cease reporting on the violence. Sure, if there’s a war in a forest and there’s no one around to document it, it probably isn’t happening.See no evil, hear no evil--Iraqis are handing soldiers flowers.

Tierney

has imbibed Julian Simon and the other irrational cornucopians from Cato.Their favorite argument is essentially that “the globe is a hollow sphere filled with oil, and the dynamic duo of the market and human ingenuity will save us even if we suck it dry.” This makes me want to tear my hair out:

“‘I predict that the incidence of war will decline,’ [Simon] told me in 1996, two years before his death. He based his prediction on the principle that there is less and less to be gained economically from war. As people get richer and smarter, their lives and their knowledge become far more valuable than the land, minerals and natural resources they used to fight over.”

I’ve really come to resent this blind idealism—it’s weakly supported by economic theory that neglects any of the external factors that exist in the real world.“The market will set us free,” “the market will lift all boats”…assuming your boat’s a yacht.

It’s no surprise that conservatives want to maintain the status quo. Representing the wealthier, aristocratic echelons of society, they’re the prime beneficiaries of their own corporate-happy imperialistic tendencies.So of course they would be loath to admit that the war in Eurasia is going poorly and the deregulatory juggernaut is speeding impending environmental disaster.They’re content to remain perched in their ivory towers, handing down regressive, militaristic mandates under the guise of the world’s “benign power,” spouting platitudes as they single-handedly send the world careening towards destruction.I dare say that not even they would be safe from climate change and wars of subsistence over fuel and water.

Conservatives often have popular support because they tell people what they want to hear--take the blue pill, maintain the delusion that everything is peachy.

Progressives want to make changes in policy that will benefit the greatest number in the long term.Change isn’t easy, and neither is admitting the path you're on isn't the best one.Progress requires a critical examination of a situation—acknowledging reality—then recognizing the challenges on the road to improvement, and following through.This flies in the face of the ignorance and false ideals of those who would prefer to put on blinders and go on “faith” alone.

This won’t come as a surprise, but we have our work cut out for us.Rather than go soft and centrist, we’ve got to open a can of New Deal era whoop-ass and give Americans an alternative to the lies and false security.We could hardly go wrong if we employed some of our opponent’s aggressive tactics—minus the lying, cheating, and scumbaggery—to not only defend the progressive stance and put forth positive policy, but to dismantle the right, and call them out for what they are: greedy, selfish, short-sighted, stuck in the past, and—in the infamous words of John Stewart—hurting America.

May 24, 2005

Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai invited the White House press corps to a question and answer session yesterday. Everything went well--flowery, grammatically incorrect pontificating business as usual. Only one thing was missing--the press. They had to fill seats with interns--and not even Talk Radio News interns that pretend to be legitimate members of the press (and in some cases are more legit than most)--but White House interns.

Reporters are fed up with Bush's staged substance-free press availabilities and would rather skip it than sit still while Bush speaks and remain a silent, approving audience. One member of the press corps lamented, "since we can't ask questions, why schlep over there?" Please tell me that was Ellen :).

May 23, 2005

"Our nation is the greatest force for good in history."-President George W. Bush,Crawford, Texas, August 31, 2002

My grandpa had a birthday on Friday, so I gave him a call (after a little parental prodding). I've unfortunately never been very close to my grandparents, so conversations usually consist of "how's the weather," "how's school," and "do you have a boyfriend/where are my great-grandkids" (okay, maybe not that far). And if I'm talking to the WWII vet grandpa, then I hear about Camp Pendleton and his travels in Asia.

Our usual fluffy conversation took a turn yesterday when he said something about Hitler and Hirohito and their being bent on world domination. Having just finished a book about U.S. militarism and imperialism, I remarked that we were seeing a similar situation today with the war. He took that as a reference to Saddam, not Bush, and he told me "honey, you've got your countries mixed up" when I brought up U.S. sanctions on Iraq to point out some of what the U.S. has done to earn its current reputation. It all became eerily familiar when he said the U.S. was just "trying to help Iraqis find freedom," but that they didn't want or understand freedom, and had their heads in the sand. I tried to explain that democracy can't be imposed, and that there has to be cultural sensitivity, but he seemed to have a pretty narrow view of the Muslim world, that it was backwards and that Americans were smarter because they didn't kill their own people (Oklahoma city? Civil War?).

It was needless to say a pretty exasperating conversation. He's a very liberal guy, and he doesn't trust Bush, so I was pretty shocked and disappointed to hear him spit back the right's rhetoric. The thing is, he was projecting the WWII view of the world onto what's going on today (in the same way that Bush and Rice are taking a Cold War era view). During WWII, the U.S. was justified in taking action, and it was a noble fight. My grandpa's generation deserves to be honored for that. What's going on today in Iraq is illegitimate and is in no way the same battle, and that's something that's misunderstood.

May 20, 2005

Been preoccupied with midterms and pitching a story to Free Speech...now to imporantant blogging business.

Follow-up:

-Posada faces deportation, after 2 months of being in the U.S. without government action...the question is whether he'll be sent to Venezuela to face murder charges in connection with the downing of a Cuban airliner. The administration is between a rock and a hard place--concede to Chavez and Castro's wishes, or violate its own policy and harbor a terrorist.

-Senate Democrats charge that Bolton perjured himself, lying about seeking George Tenet's help to discipline a dissenting intelligence officer. Have any democrats pointed out that as UN Ambassador, Bolton, with his petulance and recklessness, would be a threat to national security? Security is an idea that's been co-opted by the right, but for all their talk, security is subverted by hardliner ideology and poor policy and funding.

As for the Newsweek scandal--

FAIR points out:

"Newsweek was right to retract the Quran story--mainly because the magazine claimed to have 'sources' for the information, when Newsweek's subsequent descriptions of how it acquired the story mention only a single source. But it's far from clear that Newsweek's source was inaccurate in saying that U.S. investigators had uncovered abuse of a Quran in the course of a recent investigation; similar allegations have repeatedly been made by former Guantanamo prisoners."

Why denounce government policy that perpetuates an illegal war and human rights violations when you can attack the "liberal media"?

"It's part of the tried-and-true strategy of demonize, disguise, and divert. Demonize the news media to disguise the real causes of the resistance to occupation and divert attention from failed U.S. policies. The irony is that the U.S. corporate news media deserve harsh criticism for coverage of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- not for possibly getting one fact wrong, but for failing to consistently challenge the illegality of both wars and the various distortions and lies that the Bush administration has used to mobilize support for those illegal wars."

Emphasis on this one incident ignores that broader reality that the riots were more in protest of the U.S. occupation in general, than the specific Koran desecration:

"The frustration with U.S. policy that fuels these demonstrations isn't limited to the Koran incident, and to reduce the unrest to one magazine story is misleading. Indeed, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference last week that the senior commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Carl Eichenberry, reported that the violence 'was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.'"

So I'm sitting listening to panelists at UCSB's 2nd annual Afrogeeks conference, and a speaker just referred us to blogger La Shawn Barber (she's been endorsed by Michelle Malkin, so you know where she's coming from). She puts in her two cents on the defiling of the Koran, noting "why Islam is disrespected" and self-righteously touting the Christian notion that "the words of the Bible are written in the hearts of the believers" and that to have any other belief is absurd:

"Physical objects are not to revered or worshiped, and they hold no 'sacred' power. Islam obviously teaches something entirely different. I think it’s ridiculous for the United States to cater to prisoners of war in this way, no matter what their religion."

Nevermind the fact that many of these prisoners are held without being charged, and without the chance for a fair trial. And even if they are guilty, torture and disregard for cultural sensitivities are still unacceptable and must stop, at the very least out of concern for the U.S. reputation and future of diplomatic relations, if not out of decency and respect for human dignity.

May 16, 2005

Bill Moyers delivered a great speech at the 2005 National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis over the weekend. The former PBS host of NOW lambasted Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson for his partisan crusade to impose right-wing politics on PBS programming, a campaign that included his hiring a consultant to monitor Moyers' show for "liberal bias." Moyers has challenged Tomlinson to a televised debate on the direction of public broadcasting.

"The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party gets," Moyers said. "That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth."

"I very much regret Robert Novak’s decision to withdraw from the Arthur N. Rupe Great Debate scheduled for May 25 at UC Santa Barbara. I had looked forward to debating the important question of media bias, as well as the implications for that issue raised by Mr. Novak’s journalistic and ethical transgressions that have made him as much a “story” as a reporter. Until now, Mr. Novak has managed to avoid being asked to answer for these transgressions, either by his employers, CNN and The Washington Post, or by other journalists. No reporter from either of these allegedly liberal media institutions has yet pressed Mr. Novak to explain his role in a probe that may see two journalists jailed. Nor has Mr. Novak been pressed to explain why he would play patsy to anonymous Bush administration officials in their attempt to destroy the reputations of two loyal and patriotic public servants -- an attempt that may have endangered national security and involved the commission of a crime. If Mr. Novak withdrew from this debate because he feared the consequences of being asked to defend his journalistic ethics in a public forum, then he made a wise decision. It is ironic, however, that someone so willing to fling unsubstantiated charges appears to lack either the courage or the sense of personal honor to answer the questions he has inspired among so many of us in the profession. I also very much regret that Mr. Novak's apparent capriciousness will cause the hard work done by so many at the University of California at Santa Barbara to go to waste."

Novak has really shown his true colors. He's mastered spitting partisan lies on his own turf, but when it comes to a hard hitting, important debate outside Crossfire, he's got nothin. It's too bad, would've been entertaining to watch him go on the defensive.

May 12, 2005

May 11, 2005

Did some press coverage downtown today for a protest against the Gap that my friend Elia helped organize. The Gap's corporate social responsibility record is tarnished, but improving--an LATimes article back in January cited Gap as being "a leader in the small but growing corporate movement to improve conditions for some of the world's most exploited workers." So what's our beef? The Gap's founder, Don Fisher, is a big Schwarzenegger campaign contributor. Doesn't seem right that a company that targets young people should be donating funds to a politician who leaves schools penniless.

I'd had my doubts about how impactful a small rally convincing a handful of people to boycott a huge corporation could really be. But on the way downtown, I was driving behind a truck that looked like it was owned by the Postal Service, bearing the most despicable, hate-filled banner masquerading as "patriotism" that I've seen yet--"Revenge is very sweet" emblazoned under an American flag. Disgusted, I felt a renewed sense of determination to do anything in my power to defeat that ignorant mentality and the politicians who perpetuate it.

The activist spirit was reenergized when I arrived on State St, and watched a pair of girls push through the gathering crowd. They could've been Ashlee Simpson and Paris Hilton, a couple of fake-baked cookie-cutter princesses who turned their noses up at us, responding to our signs with an indignant "ugh, what's wrong with the Gap?" only to wave away attempts at explanation as they continued their shopping trip. That's why we were on the street--to be visible to people that otherwise wouldn't give a rat's ass, to defeat the kind of indifference and apathy that has made it so easy for Americans to be blindly led. As David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation put it before my class today, "silence is a sin." We take action how we can, and if it means going after campaign contributors to weaken an irresponsible governor's base and ultimately restore good progressive governance, we do it.

Now, what to do with that underwear I bought from the Gap...perhaps send them to the governor's mansion? I'm betting that's where part of the money I used to purchase them went anyway--Fisher's given Ahnold a quarter mil. Ehh, on second thought, that might tickle the Gropeinator's fancy a bit too much...

"The different pattern of activity that Dr. Savic sees in the brains of gay men could be either a cause of their sexual orientation or an effect of it. If sexual orientation has a genetic cause, or is influenced by hormones in the womb or at puberty, then the neurons in the hypothalamus could wire themselves up in a way that permanently shapes which sex a person is attracted to."

May 10, 2005

"...but we first turn to the reporter who interviewed Posada for the New York Times in 1998 - Ann Louise Bardach. At the time, she didn't say where he was hiding out. It was Aruba. We reached her last night at her home in Santa Barbara where she is a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is a columnist for online magazine Slate and the author of 'Cuba Exile.' She talked about what Posada admitted to her and why he chose to speak out."

Hopefully our class will get the inside scoop next week after some of this blows over...

May 07, 2005

Mother's Day means more than just flowers for its founder, Julia Ward Howe. From Democracy Now!:

"Howe was very interested by the time she got to the 1870s in the Women's Movement, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, in particular, and the Franco-Prussian War – it’s not a war that most Americans or probably even most Europeans think too much about. But in 1870, she looked at this war and she began asking herself, you know, why is it that nations do this to one another, and in particular, she began thinking about what might be possible for women to do on behalf of humanity. And women in this day and age were supposed to be confined to the home. They weren't supposed to be out making speeches or working for political change. And Howe really wanted to find a way for women to express what she thought was an innate nature of love for God and love for humans. She thought that being a mother really was a powerful experience and that after having been a mother, no one could willingly see their sons go off to war to be slaughtered, so she began to organize on behalf of women for peace, basically. And again, her theory was men just seem to be innately aggressive, and the only hope for civilization is for women to speak a different kind of voice. So, she held peace conferences both in the United States and in Britain, and by 1872, she began proclaiming that June 2 every year would be a Mother's Day for Peace. And so, Mother's Day originally was not a day when dad cooked and you went to church, and the ladies got applause and everything. It was really a day for women to come together and to call men and the world to see the necessity for living in peace, rather than giving into the ravages and aggressions of war. So, yeah, Mother's Day is really a day of activism." -Valarie Ziegler, author of Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe

"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

"Let's for God's sake talk about the real moral issues of our time," she said. "Not stem cell research, gay marriage or abortion. Let's talk about whether or not the whole of the world survives, life on the planet survives."

Amen.

In the tradition of his oreo cookie military spending math, Ben (of Ben & Jerry and TrueMajority) gives an astounding visual of U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles. Watch the 90 second movie here.

When the president talks to GodAre the conversations brief or long?Does he ask to rape our women's' rightsAnd send poor farm kids off to die?Does God suggest an oil hikeWhen the president talks to God?When the president talks to GodAre the consonants all hard or soft?Is he resolute all down the line?Is every issue black or white?Does what God say ever change his mindWhen the president talks to God?When the president talks to GodDoes he fake that drawl or merely nod?Agree which convicts should be killed?Where prisons should be built and filled?Which voter fraud must be concealedWhen the president talks to God?When the president talks to GodI wonder which one plays the better copWe should find some jobs. the ghetto's brokeNo, they're lazy, George, I say we don'tJust give 'em more liquor stores and dirty cokeThat's what God recommendsWhen the president talks to GodDo they drink near beer and go play golfWhile they pick which countries to invadeWhich Muslim souls still can be saved?I guess god just calls a spade a spadeWhen the president talks to GodWhen the president talks to GodDoes he ever think that maybe he's not?That that voice is just inside his headWhen he kneels next to the presidential bedDoes he ever smell his own bullshitWhen the president talks to God?I doubt itI doubt it.

Had another guest speaker in global journalism on Monday--freelance writer and "global soul" Pico Iyer. As someone who has written and traveled so extensively, his insight and optimismon the direction of globalization were encouraging. He views global integration and adaptation less as a form of cultural imperialism and more as an opportunity to engender understanding between disparate cultures...all well and good, assuming the integration isn't unilaterally and militarily rammed down people's throats.

Journalistand Professor Anne Louise Bardach of The Media Project at UCSB will moderatea discussion between Lionel Barber of Financial Times, New York Times Editor Bill Keller, Jacob Weisberg of Slate, and blogger Virginia Postrel.

Here's what Keller has to say about blogging:

"While he celebrated the blogger’s ability to uncover breaking news, he noted that a blog’s inherent bias might be detrimental to the reader. 'A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,' he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a 'one man circle jerk.'"

"Mitchellwent on the record, telling The New York Times 'I do think there have been instances of attempts to influence content from a political perspective tha tI do not consider appropriate.'

"Among the attempts cited by the Times: the hidden hiring of a consultant by CPB Board Chairman Ken Tomlinson to 'review' the content of 'NOW with Bill Moyers'; Tomlinson's assistance inlining up $5 million in corporate financing and subsequent PBS distribution of 'The Journal Editorial Report,' the weekly chat show featuring members of the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal; his penchant for involving the White House in matters ranging from legislation affecting the CPB board to addressing concerns about 'objectivity and balance;' all the way to remarks at a 'fun occasion' -- a post-election meeting last November-- when Tomlinson told PBS officials, including Mitchell, that they ought to make sure their programming better reflected the Republican 'mandate.'"

This organization is made possible by a grant from the federal government, the republican noise machine, and by support from viewers like you.

With recruitment levels falling short for the third month in a row, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers has told Congress that the military is on the verge of being dangerously overextended. Recruiters on campuses are getting desperate, suggesting unethical strategies to students who would otherwise be ineligible to join the army.

The battle over military presence on campuses has now reached the Supreme Court, with the justices agreeing Monday to hear a case that will decide whether the military can recruit at federally funded colleges and universities.

Joining students from universities around the country, activists from the Student Commission on Racial Equality and the LGBT Resource Center at UCSB have been embroiled in a battle to get the military off campus. The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is inconsistent with UC principles of non-discrimination, and the Academic Senate has proposed a resolution that will bar recruiters from UCSB. Read their editorial in today's Santa Barbara News Press:

"The military's 'don't ask don't tell' policy forces a person to suppress and hide her/his identity. Why is an institution of higher education allowing this discriminatory agency to recruit on its campus? UCSB's own nondiscrimination policy states: 'It is the policy of the University not to engage in discrimination against or harassment of any person employed or seeking employment with the University of California on the basis of race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, citizenship, or status as a covered veteran.' This policy must extend to anyone who steps onto campus. Should not UCSB enforce this policy where military recruiting is concerned?"

A town hall meeting on campus military presence will be held today at 3:30 pm in the McCune conference room on the 6th floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences building. The meeting’s outcome is expected to impact voting on the resolution.